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Announcing the Michael Powell Award Jury

15:00 /

Wednesday 19 June, 2013

Edinburgh International Film Festival is pleased to announce the Michael Powell Award jury.

Inaugurated at EIFF in 1990, he competition, the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature Film honours imagination and creativity in British filmmaking. The jury will also select a winner for the Award for Best Performance in a British Feature Film.

Acclaimed Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf will chair the Michael Powell Award Jury. She is joined by actor and director Kevin McKidd and film critic and historian Derek Malcolm.

Samira Makhmalbaf became the youngest director in official selection at the Cannes Film Festival 1988 with her first film The Apple, for which she won the London Film Festival’s Sutherland Trophy. Her second film, The Blackboard (2000) and third, At Five in the Afternoon (2003), both received the Prix du Jury at Cannes. A major talent in Iranian New Wave cinema, she has previously served on festival juries at Locarno, Moscow and elsewhere.

Scottish actor Kevin McKidd starred in last year's EIFF closing night gala, Disney•Pixar’s animated adventure Brave. He has played iconic roles in such films as Trainspotting and 16 Years of Alcohol and won an award for his role in the TV series Grey’s Anatomy, for which he also directed.

Derek Malcolm is chief film critic at the Evening Standard, having spent many years previously as a film critic at The Guardian. The author of several books and a former director of the London Film Festival, he has served on juries at numerous international film festivals.

Serving on the Short Film Competition Jury will be International Film Festival Rotterdam programmer Inge de Leeuw, Die Presse (Vienna) film critic Christoph Huber, and independent film programmer Ricardo Matos Cabo.

As previously announced, renowned South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho (Snowpiercer) will chair the International Jury, which also includes actress Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones) and film critic Siobhan Synnot. The jury will select the winner of the Award for Best Film in the International Competition from a selection of films that highlight filmmaking from outside the UK that is imaginative, innovative and deserving of wider recognition.

The Student Critics Jury, now in its second year, brings to Edinburgh a jury of seven aspiring film critics selected from applications received from Scotland’s colleges and universities. Under the guidance of Sight & Sound editor Nick James they will write short essays about the films and Festival as well as determine the winner of the Student Critics Jury Award.

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